1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention relates generally to accessing information on a network, and more particularly, to a system and method providing a dynamic information clipping service.
2. Related Art
Computer networks and on-line services, such as the Internet, have become a common source of news and information for computer end-users. The Internet's size and (lack of) organization, however, make repeated accesses to, and sorting of, data on a periodic basis very time consuming.
Programs have been developed that perform automatic searches for end-users to retrieve information based on specific search queries. These programs merely return search results as files for consumption (e.g., reading) by the end-user. The data returned by these programs is in its original format, which varies greatly from item to item (and from service-to-service). The various item/document formats complicates reading them.
Commercial databases, such as Lexis/Nexis.TM., Orbit.TM., Dialog.TM. and the like, are separate from the Internet and provide some form of item/document formatting when search results are displayed to the end-user. These services are very expensive. To reduce costs for repeat searches, some commercial databases provide other search services that automatically perform update searches periodically. In this case, the search query is saved by the service provider's system.
The same search is repeated at time intervals specified by the end-user, and the results are forwarded to the end-user automatically. However, if terms used to formulate a search query are not accurate, or the subject matter of the topic has developed new terminology or is otherwise divergent, the search query becomes stale. Thus, the results of the subsequent repeat searches can become inaccurate; decreasing both the precision of the search, and the recall of the information by utilizing such queries.
What is needed for Internet end-users is an accurate technique/service for accessing information on "the net" with a minimum level of user specificity and involvement, while being cost and time efficient.